


Pangas at Midnight

by Missy



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: Africa, Community: female_fest, F/M, Female Friendship, Rogue Primatologists, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:04:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pearce and Fiona are forced to team up to rescue the boys when they're kidnapped by an unbalanced researcher who murders any who dare to violate her world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pangas at Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> written for female_fest '12, prompt: Fiona/Dani or &, they're forced to team up.

Fiona brushed an errant lock of brown hair out of her eyes as she watched Pearce shuffle a stack of files together. Nervous busy work was never a good sign when you were working with a dynamic woman like Pearce, especially when the paperwork had nothing to do with the issue that quaked Fiona’s heart. She pulled at the tattered sleeve of her prison jumpsuit and waited impatiently for Pearce to finish, wishing she had the wherewithal to map an escape from her cuffs and thus the high-powered outpost they’d been taken to by a troop of plainclothesed soldiers.

“Do you have answers for me?” Fiona glowered. Being pulled out of a prison riot had been a blessing, but finding out she’d been plucked out of one minefield and into another because the feds thought she might have a decent idea of how her boyfriend’s mind worked had not been a comfort.

“How would you like me to break this to you?” Dani finally asked, releasing the paper to take a heavy drink from a large Styrofoam cup of coffee. 

Fiona’s white knuckles tightened around the bulk of her chair’s arm. “As harshly as possible,” she said, grimfaced.

Dani stared at Fiona over the top of the cup for a moment. The woman shared a moment of complete understanding before she turned back toward the files and said, “at four hundred hours, Samuel Axe, Michael Westen and…” she cleared her throat, “Jesse Porter were taken hostage by a group of rogue unknowns on the outskirts of Mombasa, in Nairobi, Kenya. They dropped all official contact sometime after they were taken. Agents are instructed to tell any inquiring parties that Westen, Porter, and Axe are persona non grata.” 

This, Fiona knew, what Michael got for doing a job off the books for Pearce. She would simply have to do what she had done a thousand times before and rescue him. “We’re going in after them,” Fi said, leaning forward eagerly in her chair.

Dani rubbed her temple and stared at Fiona for several seconds. “We don’t have the resources to do that.”

The heel of Fiona’s hand slammed down against the top of Dani’s desk. “We don’t need resources when we have ourselves and an enormous block of plastic explosives. They’re out there, somewhere – all three of them,” she suddenly said, animated, her eyes wide with passion. “And I’m not going to rest until we find them.”

Pearce cleared her throat, got up, started to pace. “We don’t have many options,” she pointed out, while Fiona leaned against the thick glass top of the desk. “They could be anywhere in that jungle right now – waiting for a rescue. But Michael’s so stubborn that he’s probably already making tracks. Tracking them through thick underbrush in the middle of the night’s a deathwish.”

“I know I can do this, Dani. Get me a plane – anything – fourth-class transport in an orange cargo prop jet. I’ll go,” Fiona said. And from the graveness of her expression Dani knew she wasn’t telling lies. 

“I can try to find an independent contractor,” she said. “But it might cost us any leverage we’ve still got over Michael’s burn.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I won’t, as long as Michael’s safe.”

It was a moment of total understanding. Pearce lifted her chin once and then picked up her phone.

“I need a charter flight to Kenya, ASAP.”

**** 

Africa was blazingly hot in early February. Fiona thought herself wise to stay under cover and keep hydrated as she tucked her sunhat closer to her ears. It was hot enough to make Pearce abandon her ubiquitous pantsuits and trade them up for cotton blouses and panama hats as she navigated them from the airstrip to the busy, lively town of Mombasa. She was the one who spoke the local language rapidly, with an excellent accent, purchasing them bunches of plantains and sacks of beans and rice, and as many coconuts as they could carry. A tour guide’s services were also found: Melawi, with his quick mind and high standing among the village’s tradesmen, had sourced out rumors of an overgrown trapper’s trail running up the front face of a mountain range nearby a gorilla preserve. It would be slow going, but someone had seen three men matching the boy’s description cut through the brush in that area, which made it a worthwhile pursuit in Fiona’s eyes. 

They ate a brief meal under the spreading fronds of a banana tree, and Pearce took her water with great pleasure. She seemed comfortable there, Fiona noticed, seemed at home in her skin anywhere they roamed.

“You’ve been here before.”

Pearce’s smile was stress-laden. “I’ve got contacts from here to the Indian Ocean. You?”

Fiona shook her head. “Only to the Ivory Coast. I’m going to have to let you lead.”

Pearce seemed to find this charming. “A pleasure,” she said. “I don’t think you’ve let many lead you, Fiona.”

“You’re right,” Fi smirked. 

But when they set out in the morning, it was Fiona who stubbornly helped their guide cut through the thick underbrush that led to the site of Michael’s final communique. It was a clearing in the underbrush several feet wide; a little search among the scrub found a smashed walkie-talkie, several sets of footprints, and a pathway of heavily trodden vegetation. 

“It goes north,” Pearce said, visibly happy to be able to use her own expertise. When both women moved to follow the group’s pathway, Melawi grabbed Fiona’s elbow and nearly received a backhand for his trouble. 

 

But Melawi would not be deterred; their disappearance would mean the loss of his days’ work, he said, and he’d be damned if he’d let them run off and die foolishly. “I can’t let either of you go further,” he said, firmly. “It’s dangerous beyond this point for both man and beast.”

Fiona’s gaze showed surprise, which twisted into anger. “Who are they?” Pearce asked, staring down the trailway. She’d had reports from this area from the guys who handled customs and prosecuted smugglers. “Is it poachers?”

“Not poachers,” Melawi said, looking from Pearce to Fiona. “Conservationists.”

“We’re going without you,” Pearce declared. 

Melawi released Fiona and took a step back. “If there is shouting, I will follow you,” he warned.

“They’ll be the ones screaming.”

*** 

“Hmm,” Fiona said, glancing into her binoculars. Two shadows moved like candleflame inside of the researcher’s cabins; a tall redhead occasionally bobbed into view, gesturing with fluid, passionate agitation; her words were indistinguishable, yet completely understandable from the thick brush into which Fiona and Dani had hidden.

Fiona’s face twisted into a confused scowl. “Who is that woman?”

“Marie Deschamps,” Dani said. “Of the Endangered Primate Foundation. In 1990 she went up into the mountain to study wild chimpanzees and she never came back down.” Pearce raised her eyebrows and said, “She makes Dian Fossey look like a pussycat. Once a poacher stumbled onto her camp, and she killed them with her bare hands. Kept their heads mounted on iron fence spikes outside her cabin for months. If the guys are in there, then they walked right into her turf – and most men don’t make it out of here alive.” 

Fiona considered her words. “I’m starting to wish I’d never given a pound to the World Wildlife Fund.”

There were two guards posted outside the front door; Fiona immediately drew a mental sketch of what they needed to do, but Pearce had her own ideas when she dared to explain what she thought.

“We’re going to have to distract them.” She tied her hair into a bun, pulled a pair of glasses from her small travel case. “And what better distraction than a lost fellow researcher?”

“How nonconfrontational,” Fiona complained.

“They have machine guns. We have two automatic rifles, C4, two pangas, a tour guide and a sack of fried plantains. Caution is our friend.” 

“If only we’d bought crisps,” Fi smiled. 

Pearce laughed, shaking her head as she rustled her clothing into a worn, disheveled mess. “I’ll plant the C4. Don’t. blow it.”

“I’m not foolhardy,” Fi complained lightly. Watching Pearce scamper off through the underbrush, she wondered how long and how boring her surveillance would be. She glanced back at Melawi, who waited with his rifle, and whose expression suggested that he thought they were both insane.

The answer came with a sudden round of automatic gunfire. Fiona didn’t bother to think twice; she charged the door and entered into the fray with Melawi at her hand hit the trigger of her HK.

Two guards went down. Another tried to fire on her but suffered the wrath of her itchy trigger finger first. A third got in several lucky punches and bruised her wrist, failing to calculate for Fiona’s ambidexterity. Slipping through the blood clotting on the dirt floor, she turned to see Dani sink her panga into the neck of a burly looking fellow. That impressed her so heartily that she froze in place, eyebrows up.

“You have…”

“…combat experience! Keep an eye out! Look behind you!”

Unluckily for Pearce, the woman she’d defeated woman sat up, moaning, and Fiona eagerly decked her before Pearce could find the panga again. 

The woman had gotten in a lucky shot on her before Fiona had struck that blow. Pearce spat out a mouthful of blood and raised an eyebrow. “We’re missing a cult leader.”

There was a pronounced thud from under their feet. With bare fingers, both women ripped into the sod beneath them, following instinct and passion to their solution.

The scent of excrement and blood rose to greet them as they tore through two wooden doors set into the sod, as did the wild-haired redhead smeared with blood and slime. She had her knee in the back of a grey head - Sam’s neck – and she had a panga held over his head. Thankfully, their entrance distracted her from her progress.

“Traitor!” she shouted, pointing blindly at them. “Murderer of your mother!” 

Fiona squeezed the trigger once, smoothly. A dot of red bloomed and dripped down Marie’s stunned face as she wilted sideways, away from Sam’s panting, sweat-soaked body.

Sam blinked up at them, managing a wan grin as he rose his head. He’d lost weight and was soaked with blood that wasn’t his own, but he was alive. Fiona’s eyes scrambled over the walls of the earthen cellar, until she noticed a pale body curled up in the corner.

She rushed toward it, pulled the grotty brown head into her lap. Two blue eyes blinked up at her, regaining their fire, their humor.

Fiona cupped Michael’s bloodstained cheeks. “You look like rubbish,” she muttered, giving him a wobbly smile.

His eyes were soulful, turning bemused at her comment. “They don’t manscape in dungeons.” He tried to lift his wrist to touch her but was tied firmly to the ground; there had been manacles, and leg irons. She would have to find someone with soldering tools. 

As if on cue, a blood-soaked Melawi peered into the darkness, calmly took in the situation, and sat down at the top of the stairs with his panga on his knee. “I’ve called for help. It may take a day or two, but they shall come.”

“Thanks for the back-up,” Fiona said, her eyes on Michael’s face, and Melawi turned back toward the open door, relieved that his family would be well-fed for the next few months.

Dani and Fiona smiled at each other in the gloom. “Thank you for what you did back there,” Dani said.

“It wasn’t any bother,” Fiona said. “Jesse would never let me hear the end of it if I’d let you die.”

“Jesse…” 

Both turned in the direction of a soft moan. It was him, reaching out of the darkness. In a moment, Pearce was beside him, and he was wincing in her arms.

Sam sat up, rubbing his bloodstained temple. Fiona had lost track of him, been oblivious to his suffering until he spoke up again. “Well,” he said, wiping his bloody nose against the back of his hand, “that sucked.”

THE END


End file.
